Tears must have welled into your eyes as they welled into mine upon the news of the death of Asia's best-known daughter, Benazir Bhutto.

News of her death reached me as I made a stop over at the editorial offices of this newspaper last week. A colleague broke the news after accessing the Internet on his desk. As word took the round in the newsroom, I could see most colleagues hushed talking in pairs or triples absorbing the news just broken.

There was my former boss in the old good days at the Tanzania News Agency (Shihata), Mr Josephat Qorro, pleased as usual to see me because I share his ideological perspectives in terms of espousing the original nationalist line of the old good days when this country was taken seriously internationally.

As I exchanged the news just broken on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, twice the Prime Minister of Pakistan. I could see in Mr Qorro a sense of loss almost personal loss as though he knew personally the assassinated Asian leader. I shared his grief - with a heavy heart cushioned with seething anger. In these things, where common ideals and humanity are concerned, there is no question of color, ethnicism or nationality when life is snuffed so callously.

"It must be the work of intelligence people of Gen. Musharraf," I volunteered to my colleagues. Musharraf is the Pakistan strongman going for President of Pakistan. My suspicion is based on the following reasons:

1. The Pakistani strongman wants to strengthen his "terrorism" boggy as a ploy to stay in power in Pakistan indefinitely. Ms Bhutto, a potential threat to his hold on power, must be sacrificed so that the global command post against "terrorism" will have no one to rely on to sort out "terrorism" and "Islamic extremism" except Gen. Musharraf.

2. Internally, Bhutto appeared a greater threat than other competitors on the local political scene because of her ancestral charisma derived from her father also killed, actually hanged in prison by another military strongman, Gen Zia Ul-Haq who had earlier overthrown a civilian led government led by the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, father of Benazir.

I am not sure if I managed to convince my former colleague at Shihata (a robust news agency also killed by neo-liberalism here!) and others who were listening to me but I remain self-convinced that Benazir Bhutto has died a victim of an American-backed puppet military junta of Pakistan.

As I am writing, I could see eyebrows being raised after the last two words just penned. Yes, indeed. Pakistan is very much a military dictatorship - everyone knows this as a fact except President George W. Bush.

Tell me: Can you believe someone who was in uniform bedecked with the General's insignia only yesterday, telling the world after taking off the uniform while serving as President of a country that he was now a "civilian" and has "retired" from the military? Really?

What is in a uniform anyway? But this is the world of fantasy of Gen Pervez Musharraf - a crude military dictator - actually a fascist judged from what all of us have been seeing on our television sets of recently after imposing a state of emergency in his country.

But of deeper urgency is not Gen Musharraf. It is the people standing behind his back - supporting him in spite of all what is capable of. It is the people who are pushing the terrorism boggy to subjugate a people, to actually control and rule them.

Everyone knows that Pakistan is an Islamic Republic. Great Britain is a kingdom with Anglicanism as its official religion. How did the world in particular the United States define the Irish Republican Army (IRA) of Britain then engaging the British Government in guerrilla warfare? Did all British people become "terrorists" just because there was an IRA to contend with? Just when did the specter or phenomenon of "terrorism" begin?

Just what form of Christianity or Islam is acceptable or tolerable to the powers that be in this world? What religion did those Serb generals in Bosnia belong when close to a million Bosnia Muslims were killed? So when does terrorism start and end? What is the root cause of "terrorism"?

Certainly these are legitimate questions that need to be addressed if one is appreciate the global situation today. But all level headed people know of only one thing: mutual respect in international relations is simply not there given the unipolar context of power politics today.

There is no longer mutual respect of cultures of different nations of the world today so that Pakistanis, Afghanis or Iranians are not left alone to develop their own form of government in accordance to their cultural dispositions.

In the place of mutual respect and tolerance in international relations to let each people develop their own forms of government, whole cultures of peoples in terms of religion and worship are contemptuously disregarded.

Whole religions are confused to "terrorism" and "extremism". So the Himid Karzais and Musharrafs of this world are recruited and imposed in their respective countries to become foremen of these imperialist powers.

Any leader with any fibre of nationalism is not to be tolerated - he/she must go. In this context, it is for the people of Pakistan to categorise their leaders. And they certainly know their leaders better, most of all, the leader who has just been assassinated. But for us in the outside world, we know exactly to whose tune men like Gen Musharraf are dancing. They will soon have to pay, sooner rather than later.